Tag Archives: Philosophy

Rhythm, a sequence in time repeated, featured in dance: an early moving picture demonstrates the waltz. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Rhythm

Ya Gotta Have Rhythm

I’ve been caught up in a few projects lately, setting goals which look good on paper or screen, and wondering why I am not getting all the things done I want to or need to accomplish. It seems that with the arrival of the vernal equinox there came a need to reflect, to assess, to plan. At the same time it seems the chain on my wheel of life slipped off the universal cog, and while I continue to function I am out of step.

I have come to the conclusion that reflection, for me at least, is not best in the long run. At least not when said reflection takes up the entire day. Day. After. Day. I pondered days of yore when I was organized, and enjoyed the thoughts so much that I returned to them again and again. Aren’t memories wonderful? One can be so selective in choosing them.

Then when I noticed I seemed to be out of sync I spent a great deal of time thinking about that. Wondrous thoughts like ‘I’m dancing as fast as I can’ came to mind, but really I wasn’t dancing, I was stumbling.

Now how can something like that happen to someone like me? Fleet of foot, well balanced, witty me?

It finally occurred to me that I was missing Rhythm. The Rhythm of getting up and getting started getting done. Of course then I had to ponder what Rhythm does for us. Aside from musical Rhythm which is obvious in its expression I considered the successful people I knew. What did they do differently? Was there a secret to their success? And the answer? Rhythm.

There are all kinds of Rhythm; some may remember the old fashioned birth control method, which didn’t work as often as it did work, then there is the toe tapping finger snapping feeling good kind, and then there is the very intrinsic, silent to the world but loud to the soul type.

This Rhythm gives us momentum as we dance across the floor of life. This Rhythm is life. It is energy.

I am not sure why I lost my Rhythm. Does it mean I am not doing something I should be doing? Is it Writer’s Block? Or is it Life’s Block? It is more than the inability to write anything worthwhile. I feel like it is a shadow I am chasing, just catching it in the corner of my eye and then disappearing.

I am not depressed or sad. I am my own enigma. A puzzle. The feeling is intriguing, and certainly entertaining.

I expect it will depart soon. One can only be entertained by such things for a while. I also expect that the secret to finding that particular kind of Rhythm is just in the doing.

Truth is one of those – the truth we think we see and the truth as perceived by another.

I had an old friend long ago. She was old in tenure and age with friends of all ages. As a matter of fact I and many others called her ‘Mum‘. She was born sometime around 1916 and lived in a large stately home her father had built in the town of Preston. She and her sister grew up learning good housekeeping from a very young age and when their school day ended they dusted both banisters of the front and back staircases.

She grew up well mannered, polite and demure as was expected of all ‘ladies’. She was always a lady.

We became friends in 1967 when I was a nursing student and she a patient. A couple of years later I went to live with ‘Mum’ and ‘Pop’.

She died in 2002 after a few years as a widow. She always kept her emotions in check as a lady should, through the death of her daughter and the difficulties with her son. She never spoke out of line. Never uttered a word of despaiir or anger. Her daily life, for her whole life was centered in the kitchen, preparing food, planning, cleaning… After dinner ‘Pop’ retired to the living room to watch TV as we cleaned up.

When her daily chores were done (about 8pm) she would go up the back stairs to the small room where she kept her craft supplies. There she remained until time for bed. She said it was truly the only time in a day that was hers.

Once Pop passed away she continued living there, taking care of the house and grounds. One of the things I talked about at her funeral was that she appeared to have no problems. She seemed to view them as challenges to be solved quietly. When she could no longer kneel to garden she she would sit on a plastic garbage bag and slide along the ground. When she could no longer carry things upstairs she filled a basket attached to a rope on the top railing and pull it up once she got to the top floor.

We spent many many evenings after a meal playing cards and talking. The only time she ever used an unladylike word was during cards when just before she threw down a winning hand she would say, “I’ll show you where the bear sh*t in the buckwheat.” They were spirited games filled with moans groans and laughter.

As her time here on this earth became shorter she started to get her house in order. Literally. Wanted to make it easier for her son, her only living child. She also started writing down the family history and told me tales of yore.

One Wednesday I suddenly felt an urgent need to see her so I stopped in on my way home from work. She was pretty quiet during the meal and later during cards. Quite suddenly, out of the blue, she said she was going to have a stroke and would be found on the kitchen floor. She said it factual like not expressing emotion. Just real quiet. I opened my mouth to say I would stay the night in my old room but a message as clear as a bell came to me. “You cannot stay. Death is in this house. You cannot stay.” I tried to get my mind around the thought and again the words were clear.

She held me for a long time that night as we hugged on the front porch and the next day I got a call from her Grandson who spontaneously decided to stop in to visit. He looked through the kitchen window to find her lying on the floor.

But that’s not what I started to tell you – as ‘truth’ and what we perceive are so often different things. I asked ‘Mum’ after she had been widowed for awhile if she would ever marry again. To me she had always seemed a woman happy in her role in life. The crisp anger in her voice startled me,

“I would never marry again. I spent my life looking after my family and my husband. I was a good wife and mother and did a good job. Now I get to look after me.”. And then we got up and went to the living room where she sat in ‘Pop’s’ easy chair and watched television.

She also told me that she followed the rules she was raised by. “Never say anything in complaint and you can never get in trouble. If I had it to do over I would talk up.”

So the truth I believed about an admirable always politically correct woman was not the truth of how she felt. Marguerite was an amazing strong incredible woman and all who knew her were blessed.

So here I sit at a precipice able to write a history for my sons and grandsons but opposing
there is the living of life. My days are full and I love it. My heart says it is important to take the time to write. At the end of the day I am tired. Projects sitting waiting completion but I embrace the quiet.

Life is wonderful and I realize I want to tell a story but age is a tiring thing. I have learned that giving all to the moment is wonderful. The joy of entering the world of others, specifically children is enticing and for this moment in my life it is as it should be. Sometimes the living out does the telling.

Perhaps there will be time in the future; perhaps I will find a way to accomplish both but
for now the living is more important than the telling. Now pops up the thought that if everyone felt that way there would be no history for someone must tell the story.

Hmm perhaps, just perhaps I can do both. For now it occurs to me….both is desirable.

That really was the start of a new awareness about life and the uh elderly..no..I mean life in the more senior population. Notice I say life in not life about.
I’m talking about the movie, not real life grumpy old men. Or real life grumpy old women for that
matter. Age, or aged, depending on how
you look at it is popular right now, probably because all we baby boomers decided not to accept ‘old’ as meaning ‘old’.

When I was twenty I thought thirty was ancient and how ridiculous that seems now. At twenty I could not imagine feeling or looking any different – ever. A woman I know at
the age of seventy-six went zip lining a couple of weeks ago and loved it. Now I tend to think eighty-five is old but may have a different point of view when I get there. I tend not to glimpse in the mirror as often anymore as the reflection belies how I actually feel.

I do seem more conscious of age now and have been looking at what makes age ‘old’ because in spite of people thinking I am much younger the facts are the facts: I am a
senior citizen.

It seems to come down to energy and joy in living. I have met some in their thirties who are much older than I, who seem beaten down, exhausted, too weary, and as though gravity itself is a weight that relentlessly prevents living. Energy does not even
have to be physical activity but can be mental.The fountain of youth as sought by Ponce de Leon was thought to be a fountain and the myth of magic waters actually extended back a thousand or more years.

Men and women alike seek eternal youth through plastics and injections which to me really has the opposite effect. Nothing
like spotting implants and unmovable facial skin makes me shake my head and wonder where the common sense is and what trigger in their brain convinces them, as they stare into a mirror that they are younger or better looking.

Longevity is of interest to me (current life span in America is 78 and in Japan is 83)
but it is not the number of years of living but the quality of life in those years. Tibet’s longevity is interesting for there the goal is for a long and healthy life. One is no good without the other.
There are a few things that are consistent in everything I have read
about youthful living.

1) ENERGY of course that makes each day
an adventure whether physical or mental – actually looking forward to each day
or minute. Moving with intention. Showing interest in just about anything. That
is energy.

2) A SENSE OF PEACE or acceptance – the
feeling that you are not at odds with the world on a daily basis. It is not that you accept injustice but within you your mind and soul are at peace with yourself. I don’t think this applies only to religious folk but each of us can find a viable truth within ourselves that makes some sense of existence. Que Sera Sera. No point in getting your girdle in a knot, as they say about things you cannot change.

3) SENSE OF HUMOR – this seems to be core to even wanting to live a long worthy life because if you cannot laugh at the irony of life or at yourself for that matter then why would anyone even want to exist for however long?

4) GRATITUDE – so essential, not because you have to, not because God demands it, but because it increasesappreciation of everything large and small around us.

5) JOY – What was the last thing you were really joyful about? Try looking at
just about anything right now, the first object to your right and finding some
joy in it. Just for the heck of it. Just because.

What is your true age and how do you define it?

‘The eyes are the windows to the soul’ is an oft used phrase and is pretty accurate as
they reflect pain, sorrow, happiness, deceit, smugness, life, love..the list
could go on and on…but they also show age, for the youth, regardless of years
have a sparkle called life and when that sparkle ceases to show then regardless
of years, there is only ‘old’.

BTW sparkles can come back. There is little
else more rewarding that bringing joy to another and seeing life.